Enter your email to subscribe:

Blog readers may be interested in Auguste J. Hocking's new article, Ownership and Control in Australia's Air Services Agreements: Further Reform Needed for Genuine Commercial Freedom?, 36 Annals Air & Space L. __ (available from SSRN here). From the abstract:

Australian bilateral air services agreements, like those all around the world, invariably contain an airline nationality clause. Most such clauses restrict designation to airlines, “substantially owned and effectively controlled,” by the state of designation and/or its nationals. A key feature of the bilateral regulatory framework, ownership and control clauses work to restrict the benefit of an air services agreement to the signatory states and lock out third parties. Uncontroversial and rarely problematic in the days of the government-owned flag carrier, the requirement is now a serious obstacle to meaningful liberalisation in the commercial aviation sector.

The free flow of capital is axiomatic of globalisation. Commercial decisions can be taken with relative freedom from artificial nationality distinctions. Rationalisation along efficiency lines, accordingly, is the norm in global markets. The airline business, however, is treated differently. Ownership and control restrictions isolate the airlines and curtail the ability to access capital, consolidate across borders and establish in new markets. Prospective efficiency gains are forgone. Many suggest, on reasonable grounds, that the future health and prosperity of the industry and the broader marketplace is dependent on relaxation of these restrictions. Commercial aviation, they posit, should be treated, “just like any other business”.

Australia considers itself at the forefront of liberalisation initiatives. It is party to 3, "open skies," agreements, one of which comprises the Single Aviation Market with New Zealand, and is presently, it is reported, negotiating a further substantive agreement with the EU. Foreign ownership restrictions for Australian airlines have been progressively reduced and, most notably, 100% foreign ownership is permitted for domestic airlines. However, like many other nations, Australia is still bound by traditional ownership and control restrictions in many of its approximately 70 bilateral agreements. Reform on a point has been slow and, as this paper will argue, further action is needed.

The U.S. Open Skies policy continues forward. After celebrating its 100th Open Skies partner earlier this year, the Department of State announced last week that it had initialed a new agreement with Macedonia. See Air Transport Agreement, U.S.-Mac., July 11, 2011 (available here).

Though not directly related to aviation, blog readers may still want to read noted antitrust scholar Louis Kaplow's latest article, On the Meaning of Horizontal Agreements in Competition Law, 99 California L. Rev. 683 (2011) (available here). From the abstract:

Competition law’s prohibition on price fixing and related horizontal agreements is one of its few uncontroversial provisions and is understood to be well grounded in economic principles that are taken to provide the foundation for competition policy. Upon examination, however, commonly offered views of the law’s conception of agreement prove to be difficult to articulate in an operational manner, at odds with key aspects of legal doctrine and practice, and unrelated to core elements of modern oligopoly theory. This Article explores these and other features of the agreement requirement and suggests the need for a wholesale rethinking of how competition law should approach the oligopoly problem.